GENIUS FORUMS

Eliz: I have notice that things in nature seem to "like" to cluster together. Mist forms beads of water, the wind blows leaves into piles, the woods are in one area but the meadow is its own little area... Even looking at the atomic level, atoms "prefer" to bond with other atoms to make a stable outer electron shell.

Cory, couldn't it be the same with whatever type of energy that goes into making concious thought? That this energy - expressed in the human mind as the electrical impulses in the brain - might not also somehow cluster together? That this energy might stay together at least for awhile after the human body is no longer suitable as a conductor of this type of energy? And is it so unreasonable that this energy, clustered together, if it wanted to remain clustered together and needed another suitable conductor to stay with its grouping of energy - would not enter another host if available?

Elizabeth, what I find unreasonable is emotional preoccupation with that which can only be speculated about. I say that a person should only be concerned with becoming clear on matters that they can only be certain about – overcoming the suffering of this life by relying on only that which is clear to reason. To do other than this is to suffer.

However, I admit that one cannot be 100% certain that there is no afterlife, but there is no way we can know for sure. I say that it is unlikely, however, I welcome an afterlife reality whole-heartedly.

Steven Coyle wrote:Reasons also lead to causes.

That's true, but only for an entity that exhibits discriminative, purposive consciousness. Reality/Nature is not such a thing and I think that's what we are talking about in this tread.

Carl G wrote:

Dan Rowden wrote:Why is the sky blue and not tangerine? Why do cats meow rather than bark? Why was I born rather than not born? Things have causes, not reasons.

What's the diff? In the examples you gave I see none.

Causes or reasons, there is room for doubt as to the full circumstances of my birth. Did I have any part in the causes for my arising in this present body? I lack the perspective to know, and find myself skeptical of logic's ability to tell me for certain.

The question is actually moot since there was no time when you "arose" in the first place. People need to understand that their lives didn't begin anywhere......

Carl G wrote:Speak for yourself. Many people do have memory of past lives.

Indeed! I remember this one time when I was ten, but that's a long and ultimately somewhat dull story so I won't relate it..

Dan,

Dan: The question is actually moot since there was no time when you "arose" in the first place. People need to understand that their lives didn't begin anywhere......

But his emotions and his name did begin somewhere. And that is what this is really all about - feeling in relationship to the thoughts comprising 'the me'.

I see the point you are making here dan, but again, the ego with its emotions and feelings does arise, there is "I" conscousness, there is the sensation of personal subjective experience.

If you look at a big wave at a beach, there is a definite moment when a new wave emerges, and a definite point at which it crashes.

Most people want the wave to never crash.

Cory Duchesne wrote:Dan,

Dan: The question is actually moot since there was no time when you "arose" in the first place. People need to understand that their lives didn't begin anywhere......

But his emotions and his name did begin somewhere. And that is what this is really all about - feeling in relationship to the thoughts comprising 'the me'.

I see the point you are making here dan, but again, the ego with its emotions and feelings does arise, there is "I" conscousness, there is the sensation of personal subjective experience.

If you look at a big wave at a beach, there is a definite moment when a new wave emerges, and a definite point at which it crashes.

Most people want the wave to never crash.

I disagree. The emotions are not the spirit. I was on a field trip as a kid, and spent what seemed like an hour going down one of those corkscrew slides over and over -loving it. My mother took me to the same park not long after, and i went to the slide and she told me not to go down, how dangerous it was, and graphic stories about what could happen if I fell off. I was too scared to go down the slide after that. I don't recall ever being that kind of frightened before, That may have been the birth of my fear, but IMO that was not any part of the birth of my soul. If anything, that was a birth of some delusion.

edit to add last line.

so you enjoying the slide wasnt a part of your spirit?

I agree that people don't want the negative emotions to continue.

They want the next world to be only the good, and for most people - good is a feeling, a sensation.

Otherwise, if there is only intellect/logic, then I don't see why anyone would care about what happens after death.

Cory Duchesne wrote:

Carl: No, it does not seem possible that my soul, or whatever we wish to call the I-dentity of me, has always existed. I do not know when the birth of that would have occurred. When it originally took place, it would have necessarily happened without my participation.

Ok, so your soul once did not exist and somehow was born.

Now, do you think there will come a day when your soul will perish and thus become the way it was before it was born (non-existent)?

Or do you think it is somehow possible that, despite your soul was born, that it will never die, that it will live on indefinitely?

Certainly it is possible.

If you look at a big wave at a beach, there is a definite moment when a new wave emerges, and a definite point at which it crashes.

Actually, there is no definite point that we can say a new wave emerges - relatively we can aproximate.

Dan Rowden wrote:
The question is actually moot since there was no time when you "arose" in the first place. People need to understand that their lives didn't begin anywhere......

That's right, I keep forgetting that I don't actually have a body or all these physical experiences. Reality is mental, and there is no me, only energetic reactions producing phenomena among parts of the whole. Hang it, no need to make efforts in any direction. I'm slumming from here on out. What does it matter.

Carl, that doesn't appear to make a lick of sense..

I think Carl, like many people including myself, is having a hard time reconciling subjective, private experierence with our knowledge of physiology/neurology.

As to how irritating nervous tissue can produce consciousness and feeling just seems inexplicable to most.

If you think about how to make a robot that actually has feelings......seems so unlikely.

And the ones who don't find subjective feelings to be strange, you have to wonder if they are being honest.

Dualism is the belief that the only way to account for sensation, thought, and feeling is to make a plea for some kind of soul.

some of you might have heard the term 'the explanatory gap'.

The gap between the (more masculine) impersonal scientific knowledge that we observe and attain from third person in relationshp to the (more feminine) personal, subjective, inner experience, first person persepctive.

Carl finds the femmine aspect difficult to reconcile with the masculine - as do I.

monism on the other hand appeals only to natural laws, physics, chemistry and biology and it renders inner experience illusionary.

With monism there is no free will.

Cory Duchesne wrote:so you enjoying the slide wasnt a part of your spirit?

The fear was not a part of my spirit. That was something given to me by my mother.

Carl:
That's right, I keep forgetting that I don't actually have a body or all these physical experiences. Reality is mental, and there is no me, only energetic reactions producing phenomena among parts of the whole. Hang it, no need to make efforts in any direction. I'm slumming from here on out. What does it matter.

Dan:
Carl, that doesn't appear to make a lick of sense..

Doesn't it? Why should we bother with anything under that paradigm? What is the point?

Steven Coyle wrote:

Dan Rowden wrote:

Steven Coyle wrote:Reasons also lead to causes.

That's true, but only for an entity that exhibits discriminative, purposive consciousness. Reality/Nature is not such a thing and I think that's what we are talking about in this tread.

In dreams we experience pure mind.

The mind communicates by symbol. Dreams are evidence of this process. A purposeful process!

Which is created entirely by Nature.

Deep dreamless perhaps, but not dream sleep. Dreaming is just the continuation of the thought process.

Has anybody read the Ender series(its fiction, but bear with me), by Orson Scott Card? If not, he said that when a life is started it calls an aura(a never ending identity that doesn't contain characteristics or feeling, only self) from a place(technically a nowhere) that he called the "outside", to fill the body and give it a will. Auras are drawn toward's life like north and south magnets, or male and female counterparts. Every single thing has an aura, and some, the ones with more powerful wills, can encompass more units of being (I have no idea what those could be). When that life is spent, all is lost, except the will and the self, and the aura leaves our world.
This seems much more likely than god, or complete ending at death. My thinking runs along side Orson Scott Card, even though I woul change a few very small details.

In deep dreamless sleep, there's no R.E.M.

(A REMinder to keep those eyes open when you wake)

I agree that dreams are a continuation of thought processes.

But, what does this say about our thought processes?

If dreams are ultimately symbolic in nature, wouldn't reality also be symbolic as well...

Steven Coyle wrote:In deep dreamless sleep, there's no R.E.M.

(A REMinder to keep those eyes open when you wake)

I agree that dreams are a continuation of thought processes.

But, what does this say about our thought processes?

If dreams are ultimately symbolic in nature, wouldn't reality also be symbolic as well...

Major drag, eh? That's why truth, not the relative types, but the absolute state, is the absence (READ TOTAL) of thought.

Can you elaborate?

Is there a question?

EDIT: in response to your edited post...not to be difficult, but could you ask a specific question pertaining to what was said?
kow is only a medium. :)

How would you relate the dream state with your definition of no-thought?

You guys and your definitions! Thought is just the response of the brains registration of experience/sensation, that unfortunately has taken on a life of its own as the 'me'. Dreaming is that activity in the dark, while the body is asleep. It's an attempt to resolve what wasn't resolved during waking hours. There is also deeper intimations and some completely meaningless stuff. Blah, blah, blah.

Steven,

Not to beat a dead horse here, but I think your post about sleep is interesting. It would seem that we agree that thought ceases in deep sleep, no? Perhaps I took your agreement out of context before when you agreed that thought doesn't cease (or something like that, can't recall the exact words.)

No worries.

I saw that. :) No fun at all.

Beebuddy wrote to steven,

It would seem that we agree that thought ceases in deep sleep, no?

if thought ceases in deep sleep, then there can be no direct awareness of deep sleep - instead one can only presume after the fact.

Kow, Beebuddy, are you guys equating 'the unconditioned state' to be a state that one can only presume happened, rather than be remembered?

For instance, we can only pressume deep sleep happens based on both our knowledge of REM states and our knowledge that 8 hours passes without us experiencing it.